eak of a confessional Lutheran doctrine of inspiration. Quenstedt's
doctrine of verbal inspiration is mechanical and in conflict with all
that we know of the Holy Ghost's activity; it cannot be proven from the
Scriptures, nor indeed is it necessary. Stump considers the Bible free
from error in its religious teachings, but not in its astronomical,
geological, physical, and similar statements. To quote literally: "The
holy writers were not inspired, however, to be 'teachers of astronomy,
or geology, or physics,' and no number of contradictions in this sphere
would shake our confidence in the absolute authority of Holy Scripture
as the infallible test of theological truth, and inerrant guide in all
matters of faith and practise." "The dogmaticians were led to maintain
it [the verbal inspiration] by the exigency of the times and the stress
of their severe dialectics. [The interest of the dogmaticians was to
present the clear doctrine of the Scriptures on inspiration.] And as a
result of their doctrines, they were logically obliged to claim the
absolute impossibility of any kind of error or inaccuracy whatsoever in
the Scriptures, even in unimportant externals; and further more to claim
that the Scriptures are not only the sole and infallible guide in
matters of religion, but also an infallible guide in matters of human
science so far as they touched upon any part of science's domain,
--claims which a careful examination of the Scriptures and the purpose
for which they were written do not bear out." (_L. u. W._ 1904, 85.) It
was in agreement with these views when the _Lutheran_, prior to 1904,
maintained that the Bible must be explained according to the modern
sciences.

139. Other Symptoms of Liberalism.--As a rule, the inerrancy of the Holy
Scriptures is denied in the interest of the theory of evolution, a
doctrine absolutely incompatible with, and, consistently developed,
destructive of, the very fundamentals of Lutheranism. The evolutionary
doctrine, however, this antipode of Christian thought, which, wherever
digested, has proved to be the beginning of the end of Christianity, was
adopted also and publicly defended within the General Council. Rev.
Brenner says: "I have heard General Council ministers say that they did
not believe everything that is written in the Bible, and as they
continued to explain their views, it became very evident that they were
evolutionists." (_L. u. W._ 1917, 465.) Dr. T.E. Schmauk, the preside